New Moon
by Maiden of the Moon
Summary: The sun always rises. Eventually. [Cecilos?]


**Disclaimer: **Nnnnnnnnnnooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

**Author's Note: **The kernel of this idea was planted in my head by Fallout Boy's "The Phoenix," but it really took root after episode 32. The end result isn't terribly reminiscent of earlier plans, buuuuut I suppose that's fine. (That said, "The Phoenix" should still be used to inspire some Kevin-"reeducating"-Cecil-based Cecilin, though. Someone please write it.)

**Warnings: **Cecilos…? Body horror, I guess? Written very late at night, and edited very early in the morning. So, you know. Woo~

**XXX**

**New Moon**

**XXX**

**i. Night follows day.**

"_Carlos."_

"What's wrong? Shouldn't you be at the radio station?"

"_I am. I hurt." _

"What hurts, sweetheart?"

"_Everything." _

"How much of everything?"

"_The whole of my soul and the bits that have seeped into the cracks between."_

"Oh my."

"_Make it better? Please?_"

"I'll do what I can."

**ii. Day follows night.**

"Here," he says later, sweetly, suede palm cupped around a mouthful of encapsulated rainbows. The pills—gelled, chalky, sugar-coated—roll and clatter with the innocence of candy. Cecil eats them like candy. He opens wide, weighs them on his tongue, and swallows dry. His Adam's apple bobs up and down in mimicry of an obedient child.

"Good boy," Carlos praises. He beams like sunrise; they kiss like twilight.

As always, his scientist tastes of sanitized sands in arid winds.

**iii. The sun and the moon; the darkness and the light. **

"_I'm dying._"

"Everything is okay."

"_Everything is okay, but I'm dying, Carlos._"

"You'll be better soon, sweetheart."

"_Do you promise?_"

"Have I ever let you die before?"

"_No. No, of course not."_

"You see?"

"_You do take excellent care of me... Because you like me for personal reasons, right?"_

"Tease. Of course I do."

"_And because I'm your favorite subject, right?"_

"You know it."

"_So you'll be giving me a very, very thorough, ahem, physical examination, right…?_"

"Maybe once you're feeling better."

**iv. The sky in a single, ouroboros beast. **

Night falls with the cloying finality of a funeral shroud, obsidian and heavy. Thick. Cecil gropes at it, pulling himself along—handful after insubstantial handful of midnight. He flounders against its dusty, oppressive folds as if it were one of the cobwebbed curtains in the decimated shell of the opera house.

He isn't afraid.

"Carlos?" he calls, pleasant. Wondering. As if through a fugue, he can feel the tender stretch of facial muscles: a tug like fishhooks and a burn like lockjaw. The corners of his mouth twitch. His molars grind. He says his lover's name again, and remembers honeyed fingers tracing over his cheeks, labeling the tendons beneath translucent flesh. The zygomaticus major and minor, the orbicularis oculi; the levator labii superioris, the levator anguli oris and risorius. A pleasant shudder leaves him pink.

"What is it, babe?" Carlos replies from the kitchen. He has the weather on his lips, his attention trained upon the stove and whatever is sizzling atop it, hissing and popping like hydrochloric acid. It smells like steak. Cecil would ask to have his kept rare, but Carlos already knows. Because Carlos is attentive. Carlos is observant. He remembers things. He takes care of his boyfriend.

Cecil says instead:

"I'm not feeling well. Have you seen my medicines?"

"Look around you. They're on the dining room table." Carlos gestures, as he is wont to do, with a greasy spatula. Then he winces, sheepish, as he notices the state of said table. "Sorry, I think they got buried beneath my paperwork…"

"It's fine," the host sings. "I can find them."

And he does. He shuffles through yellow memos and orange notices. He sweeps away grant reports covered in words like _allografts _and _regeneration _and _somatic cell nuclear transfer _and other such Science. He half-reads a paragraph about a farm, about livestock numbered 738377-VI-NV and 23245-XII-NV, but ultimately decides it's not his business. Investigation is fine, but prying is rude. Also, Carlos is calling him for supper. So rather than dig metaphorically, Cecil focuses on the literal: he unearths his bottles— the ones with the triangular stickers— and shakes out his tablets.

Swallows. Smiles. Has faith in something that does the same.

**v. It eats itself. **

"_Jake Stevens, you know, the farmer? He's complained about being ill, too."_

"I know. It's been taken care of."

"_Already? So fast! A model of efficiency, that's my handsome Carlos._"

"Hmmm."

"_What's wrong?_"

"It's just— well. I'm… I'm sorry for making you wait. But. You know. Perfection takes longer."

"_Awww, now, Carlos! Stop! I'm not perfect."_

"Yes, you are. You are to me. You always are to me. Every time."

**vi. The moon waxes, wanes. Disappears all together.**

"You're perfect," he whispers, with all the reverence of a god speaking to its own creation. "You are _everything_." And the compliments are echoed back upon himself, uttered with the same awe and gratitude as a doll praising its master. Together, they underscore the matching murmurs with touches and kisses and skin—yards and yards of skin, freed from the confines of clothes and shame. The darkness eats it all.

Trepidation. Vision. The stagnant weight of _knowing_ which settles like a tumor in an enigmatic mind, censoring questions and creativity in lieu of another buck, another thrust. Carnality. Blackness consumes the room, and the host consumes his lover, and the obsidian abyss of dilated pupils flair like the void, until they have consumed all but the wide whites of bloodshot eyes.

"You taste like sand," Cecil whispers, throat fucked raw and giggles as effervescently saccharine as champagne. The same rosy tan, too, he thinks in a burst of synesthesia. Then he pauses, thinks of something else. Cocks his head. Licks liquid pearls from his sickle lips and sharper teeth.

His neck _creeeeeeeeaks_.

"How much sand do you think there is in the world? There's got to be a lot."

Carlos, flushed and panting, kisses the very tip of his nose.

"A lot of sand," he agrees, breathless.

**vii. But the sun remains. **

"_Time is running out." _

"Time is broken here."

"_I don't like this body as much."_

"Don't be childish. It's beautiful."

"_If you say so._"

"Are you ready, sweetheart?"

"_As I ever am._"

**viii. The sun rises. **

_Kill your double. KilL your doUble. KiL yoUr dhuBLE. K IL YOUr huGLE. IL OVr hUGle. I LOVe hUgl. I LOVe HUg. I LOVE HUG. LOVE HUG. HUG AND KISS. HUG AND KISS GOODNIGHT. GOODNIGHT. NIGHT. SLEEP. REST. _

"_Go to _sleep," he coos, and, brainlessly, the one between his fingers closes empty ebony eyes. His neck _creeeeeeeeaks. _Then— _crack. _With a puppet-string jerk of lanky limbs, the ice of the sterilized room is swiftly abated: he is blanketed by a gushing surge of wet and warm. It drips from his mouth, forges trails across his temples. Red. Redredred. Like a heart.

"Sweetheart?"

The voice throbs. He looks around. Doesn't blink. Carlos is standing beside the door, robed in virginal white and wearing a look of concern. Instinctively, he wants to trace that face, to label its tendons: orbicularis oculi, platysma, corrugator supercilii and procerus; orbicularis oris, mentalis, and depressor anguli oris. He wants to look inside. Deeper than the superficial sinew of muscle. Deeper than the ichor clogging rotting organs. _Deeper_. He thinks of licking, and biting, and burrowing; of parasites and poltergeists and the physical examination he'd been promised. He thinks lots.

He says little. For now.

For now, the radio host merely grins, nicking his ears on the razor curve of his smile.

"I feel _much_ better."

**XXX**


End file.
